Thanks to Android boom and strategic mistakes at Microsoft, Bing search is even further behind Google on mobile devices.
Category: Future
Behind codes of encryption, the so-called “Deep Web” hosts a vast network of people trading in illegal sales of all sorts, most notably any drug imaginable.
MUNICH – To many, “i” was just a letter of the alphabet – until it was used by a then unknown computer company to skyrocket to the global position Apple holds today. And now BMW is hoping to go far on “i” too, investing billions in the i3 electric car due to come onto the […]
PARIS – To infinity … and beyond! Within the next decade, if all goes according to plan, we Earthlings will have two crucial instruments at our disposal to probe the outer reaches of the universe. Doing so, will allow us to go back in time to the very birth of the universe, 13.7 billion years […]
At the end of this year, when Apple’s cheap iPhone comes out, it is going to be amusing to listen to all the Apple fans who consoled themselves about Apple’s loss of market share by dismissing competitors’ phones as “cheap plastic crap.” Because the new cheap iPhone is supposed to have a cheap plastic back. […]
BARCELONA – The couple looks in love and relaxed. The evening twilight gives the picture perfect lighting and the background is idyllic. But right next to them, in front of the Alpine range, there’s a herd of tourists with their horrible fluorescent bobble hats. You know them – the photo bombers, the people who just […]
DIE WELT (Germany), PNAS (USA) Worldcrunch PISA – Take a guess how many types of medication you have in your medicine chest. Fifty? A few hundred? Medication is a banality in our day – but things looked very different 2000 years ago when there were no pharmaceutical giants and mass production facilities. Hippocrates had to […]
ASAHI SHIMBUN (Japan), KICKSTARTER (UK) Worldcrunch TOKYO – Japan is a country known for its cutting-edge science and technology. Walkmans, videocassette recorders, Compact Discs, Blue-Ray, digital cameras, flat panel tvs – you name it, it was invented in Japan. But this new Japanese invention will – literally – blow your tail off. The “Tailly,” according […]
BEIJING – At least 8,572 premature deaths occurred in four major Chinese cities in 2012 due to the high levels of fine particle pollution. This was the conclusion of a joint study called PM2.5: Measuring The Human Health And Economic Impacts On China’s Largest Cities carried out by Greenpeace and Peking University. Apart from the […]
RAMNICU VALCEA – To the tourist eye, Râmnicu Vâlcea is a quiet, leafy city. Located at the bottom of the Carpathian mountain range, in central Romania, no one would guess this town’s secret, buried in its working-class neighborhood, Ostroveni. You have to leave the boulevard that stretches across the city to end up in narrow […]
Set to be available in the US this year, this mixture of medicines in one pill is aimed at reducing heart attacks. Its inventor says even middle age people with no symptons should take it.
SUDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG (Germany) Worldcrunch Süddeutsche Zeitung has seen the draft of an amendment to German legislation that would for the first time legalize exporting German nuclear waste. While the change would impose tight conditions on such transfers and official agreements with the countries providing disposal sites, environmentalists are equating the amendment to a “burst dam.” […]
LA STAMPA (Italy) Worldcrunch PISA – This story is a yawner. You’ve been there before: standing in line or sitting around the conference table when some sleepy-eyed dude lets loose a big ol’ yawn, and you – tired or not – start yawning too. Yes, yawns are indeed contagious. Research has shown that some 50 […]
PARIS – Hurricane Sandy in the U.S., the tsunami in Japan or the eruption of the Eyjafjoll volcano in Iceland. Could the rising tide of such natural disasters be explained by man’s voluntary action? Could these cataclysms be triggered deliberately by the army, for political reasons? For years, these conspiracy theories, relayed generously on the […]
BERLIN – Christian Hummel knew he would suddenly be confronted with all sorts of new situations when, after nine years at a major German steel company, his boss offered him the job heading up a three-person development unit. Hummel thought long and hard before accepting. He would not only bear the responsibility for the work […]
European law may require right to anonymity. Will Zuckerberg’s ad-based business model “crumble”?
PARIS – Adam Lanza, killer of 20 children and seven adults, including his mother, is a mass murderer – he murdered a large number of people in a short time in one place. He then committed suicide in a classroom. Ending your life or having the police shoot you dead is often part of the […]
NASA and others have chimed in on the likelihood of black holes, solar flares striking on Dec. 21.
BBC, LONDON FIRE BRIGADE (UK) Worldcrunch LONDON – Are you already getting Twitter alerts from the subway company? Football results? Movie listings ? Now it’s your turn to do your city a favor. The London Fire Brigade is now recruiting the Twitter army to spread information on fires and incidents around the city. Tweet your […]
DOHA – Jean-Pierre Moreau is growing flowers in the desert. Just 30 kilometers west of the Qatari capital of Doha, roses, gladiolus, chrysanthemum are blooming. At the request of Hamid Khalifa al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar, the Frenchman produces four million flowers a year, with the help of 60 employees mostly from Nepal and India. […]
GENEVA – The disappearance of many sailors has been blamed on something that doesn’t quite seem real: hallucinations, which have even prompted sailors to believe they had reached port and to climb over the railing of their boat. Loss of lucidity, loss of bearings – sleep deprivation can wreak havoc on a sailor’s mind, to […]
LA STAMPA (Italy), BBC (U.K), NASA, CHRISTIAN POST, LATIN TIMES (U.S.A.) Worldcrunch HUNTSVILLE– Every year around this time in December the real Christmas lights, aka the Geminid meteors, come out to light up the night sky. The BBC explains that the celestial shower occurs as the Earth passes through the path of an asteroid called […]
Children’s privacy is of particular concern in Europe, even as US tech giants line up to oppose any new laws that could force Internet “de-indexing.”
PARIS – On November 27, Reporters Without Borders launched a new website called “We Fight Censorship,” that “publishes content that has been censored or banned or has led to reprisals against its creator.” The content is selected by an “editorial committee,” posted in its original language then translated – mostly into English or French. The […]
THE AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW, AAP, THE AUSTRALIAN (Australia) Worldcrunch Turn right, then after 200 meters, you have reached your destination. NOT. A glitch in Apple’s new iPhone mapping system is putting lives at risk by sending motorists into isolated parkland, the Australian news agency AAP reports. Over the past month, police officers in Mildura, a […]
BERLIN – Yes, he has investigated cases of murder by poisoning, says Burkhard Madea. The forensic pathologist at the University of Bonn, an expert in unexplained causes of death, recalls “a series of deaths about 20 years ago when a nurse deliberately gave old, helpless patients the wrong medication. The victims all died suddenly, but […]
UNITED DAILY NEWS (Taiwan) Worldcrunch BEIJING- There’s a new iPhone app circulating in Beijing that breaks a new barrier in cool convenience, and it comes with a rather awesomely descriptive name: “Yaoyao-zhaoche,” which translates from Chinese as shake-shake cab-calling. According to the United Daily News, after downloading the app and establishing a paypal minimum balance, […]
BERLIN – In the Qatari capital of Doha, the decisive phase of the UN Climate Conference has begun. Ministers and government representatives from over 190 countries have until Thursday to adopt concrete measures to save the world’s climate. Part of the ritual at conferences like this is that shortly before the end of negotiations, the […]
ASAHI SHIMBUN (Japan) Worldcrunch FUKUSHIMA – Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant is considering erecting a giant net to prevent radioactive fish from heading out to sea. In surveys conducted through October at the request of local fishery cooperatives, TEPCO found that the radioactivity levels of species of fish caught […]
DIE WELT (Germany) Worldcrunch In Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, floods are a regular part of life, with more than a half million people affected in the past year alone. Even more troubling, authorities in the worst-hit province, An Giang, note that most of the victims are children, German daily Die Welt reports. Take Nghia, 7. In […]
PARIS – One recent Sunday afternoon, a father sits on a park bench reading his magazine; all the while watching his six-year-old son Sébastien out of the corner of his eye, as he plays on the seesaw with the other children of his Parisian neighborhood. One of the children runs back to his mother, followed […]
CLARIN (Argentina) Worldcrunch BUENOS AIRES – The old-growth forests of South America’s Patagonia region are now, more than at any time in the past 600 years, extremely slow growth, according to researchers from Argentina’s National Council of Scientific and Technical Research, or CONICET. What’s causing the slow down? The scientists point to ozone depletion in […]
SANTIAGO – “The visible web is the tip of the iceberg,” says Anand Rajaraman, co-founder of Kosmix, a search engine for the Deep Web (DW). One of Kosmix’ investors is none other than Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. The iceberg sounds daunting, but Rajaraman seems to know what he’s talking about. How is it possible […]
LANZAROTE – The photograph looks like something out of a glossy tourist campaign: a surfer, board under his arms, coming out of the turquoise waters that lap against the fine, white sand. Nothing out of the ordinary, seeing as the shot was taken on the island of Fuerteventura, famous around Europe for its natural beauty […]
The Republican Party’s losses in last week’s election have brought about a moment of reckoning for conservatives, as GOP leaders, grassroots activists, and political strategists try to make sense of their defeat and figure out how the party can rebuild itself before the next election cycle. By most accounts, Republicans were stunned by the election […]
MADANG – Armed with thousands of test tubes, flasks, microscopes, mouth aspirators, gillnets and compressors, Olivier Pascal and Philippe Bouchet have arrived in Madang, their departure point for their new expedition in Papua New Guinea, which started last month. The botanist for an NGO, Pro-Natura International, and the zoologist specializing in mollusks at the National […]
BERLIN – Drivers have been communicating with each other for 125 years with brake lights, turn signals and horns. But a new era is beginning: Car-to-X Communication (C2X). This is connectivity between vehicles making it possible for them to exchange information and warn of dangers. In early 2007, with about 40 million euros of taxpayer […]
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY, BBC (U.K.), DER SPIEGEL (Germany) Worldcrunch LONDON – A long-term international study of wild Atlantic salmon has discovered that large numbers of free-ranging salmon are being killed by parasitic sea lice, the BBC has reported. Sea lice, which attach themselves to salmon and then eat their flesh, blood and tissue, […]
DIE WELT (Germany) Worldcrunch In his latest book, American National Geographic photographer and reporter Michael Yamashit writes about the Yartsa Gunbu miracle mushroom that could also be called Himalayan gold. Die Welt’s Bettina Seipp reports that depending on the quality of the shriveled Caterpillar Fungus, Chinese buyers are prepared to spend tens of thousands of […]
Being overweight is unhealthy. The medical community never tires of predicting an early demise for obese people, and strongly urging them to lose weight. But in fact, the latest science says that fat people live longer and can tolerate higher levels of stress. “The classic view is that obesity is an illness that has to […]